1) Treve wins the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, 5 October
The Head family has been bound up with the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for three generations since William Head saddled the winner in 1947, and they have been associated, as either trainer or jockey, with 10 successes in all. This, though, was surely their finest moment. For much of the year, Treve, the brilliant winner of the 2013 Arc, had seemed to be a diminishing shadow of her three-year-old self, but Criquette Head-Maarek never lost faith and coaxed the filly back to her best to become the first dual winner for 36 years. Her “Papa”, Alec Head, bred Treve at the family stud. “I am in a dream, in a dream,” he said afterwards. “I have trained several Arc winners, but Treve is the best of them.”
2) Sire De Grugy wins at Cheltenham, 12 March
If the days are gone when cheaply bought horses from unheralded yards could win feature races at Cheltenham – and, on the whole, they probably are - then Sire De Grugy was a glorious exception to prove the rule. Trained by Gary Moore, a grafter’s grafter, and ridden by his son Jamie, brother of the multi-millionaire Flat jockey Ryan, Sire De Grugy’s win in the Queen Mother Champion Chase cleared the weighing room as Moore’s colleagues emerged to applaud both horse and rider back to the winner’s enclosure. It was the first Festival victory for both trainer and jockey, and in all likelihood the last as well, unless Sire De Grugy can follow up in three months’ time.
3) Noble Mission wins the Champion Stakes, 18 October
A famous and talented sibling can be a burden for any athlete to bear, and Frankel’s younger brother spent much of his career reminding everyone that a flawless pedigree can only take you so far. He got lucky when it mattered, though, as heavy rain before Champions Day not only reduced the field for the feature race, but also left the ground ideal for a mud-loving front-runner. Noble Mission refused to yield in a duel with Al Kazeem through the final quarter-mile, and guaranteed an ecstatic welcome into the winner’s enclosure for his trainer Lady Cecil, the widow of Sir Henry, who trained Frankel. Britain’s most valuable raceday needed an abiding memory, and Noble Mission arrived to save the day.
4) Toast Of New York finishes second in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, 1 November
As unlikely a story as any in racing this year, or any year. Jamie Osborne, bashed-up jump jockey turned trainer, sends many more horses to lowly Wolverhampton than he does to Ascot, Epsom and Newmarket put together, but he was a nose away from becoming the first British trainer to win the Classic, America’s most valuable race, on dirt. After a compelling three-way battle down the straight, Toast Of New York, a brave bull of a horse, should probably have got the race in the stewards’ room, but he is due to get another go at Bayern, the winner, in the most valuable race of them all, the Dubai World Cup, in March.
5) The Cheltenham Gold Cup, 14 March
All 23 minutes of it. It was thrilling enough on the track, as the race changed completely after the last fence when Silviniaco Conti, who led over it, faded badly as Lord Windermere charged down the outside to short-head On His Own. But there is nothing like a good stewards’ inquiry to drag out the drama, and this was a knife-edge belter. It took the officials 15 minutes before they decided to leave the result unaltered. Cue delight for Jim Culloty, successful three times in the Gold Cup as a jockey on Best Mate and now as a trainer too, and despair – but, sportingly, no appeal – in the Willie Mullins camp. He must wait to join the elite club of trainers who have won the Grand National, Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup.
6) Pineau De Re wins the Grand National, 5 April
The biggest yards tend to divvy up most of Cheltenham’s main events these days, but the Grand National remains a defiantly different beast. Dr Richard Newland has space for just 12 horses at his stable near Worcester, but one of the dozen was good enough, and fortunate enough, to emerge in front at the end of the first National with a million-pound prize fund. Leighton Aspell, the winning jockey, had a story to tell too, having U-turned out of retirement back in 2007 after 18 months because he missed the buzz of the weighing room too much. Cheltenham is for National Hunt’s mega-corporations, but Aintree, happily, will always be a place that gives everyone a chance.
7) Estimate tests positive for morphine, 23 July
Of all the horses in all the yards in Newmarket that could have munched on a batch of contaminated feed in mid-June, one of them had to be Estimate. Runners from several well-known stables tested positive for morphine this summer, apparently thanks to poppy seeds in a rogue batch of foodstuff, but only Estimate allowed news organisations to link the head of state with a Class A drug and it was not a chance that any were about to miss. Estimate gave the Queen one of the greatest moments of her many decades on the turf when successful in the Ascot Gold Cup in 2013, but was disqualified from second place in this year’s race, costing her owner nearly £100,000 and no end of uncomfortable headlines.
8) Roger Varian wins his first Classic, 13 September
And if it is not the first of many, it will be a major surprise. Varian has been quietly impressive, and progressive, ever since taking over the licence at Kremlin House Stables in Newmarket in 2011 from the late Michael Jarvis, who would be proud of the way in which his former assistant has maintained his record of understated excellence. Varian had a Group One winner in his first season and took another significant step forward when Kingston Hill, who was second in the Derby, landed the St Leger at Doncaster. Richard Hannon, who inherited a championship-winning stable from his father, also Richard, landed a Classic at the first attempt in May when Night Of Thunder took the 2,000 Guineas, and it will be a surprise if Varian is not a title contender too in the near future.
9) Sheikh Mohammed spends big, 7-9 October
It takes more than the wealth of a mere king to compete at the top of Flat racing these days. Most of the major players are billionaires several times over with immense egos to match, who use the major bloodstock auctions as a chance to invite their rivals to feel the size of their wad. The al-Thani family from Qatar have been moving into thoroughbreds in a big way in recent years, but with the bruises from the Godolphin doping scandal now starting to fade, Sheikh Mohammed sent out a message at this year’s most exclusive sale in Newmarket that the big boss is back in the hood. The Sheikh splashed out on nearly 40 of the most choicely bred yearlings and is clearly not going to shuffle quietly from the stage. The next few years will see plenty of ego-wrestling in the world’s biggest races.
10) Births. To racing: a right, 3 December
The subject of racing’s financial structure is, even for most keen followers of the turf, about as dull as a January morning in Reykjavik, but one of the more obscure announcements in George Osborne’s Autumn Statement could prove to be highly significant for a sport which needs to grow up and look after itself. The racing right, which will have plenty of support in parliament whatever the result of May’s general election, is supposed to allow racing to sell itself to the general public via the money they lose from betting on it, and could yet prove to be the most significant development since betting shops were legalised in the early 1960s. A sport which dates back to the late 1600s could yet be about the join the 21st century.
• This article was amended on 5 January 2015. An earlier version said that Noble Mission is Frankel’s older, rather than younger, brother.
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